Without Excuse

“Existentialism proposes no evasion.” – Simone de Beauvoir

Rather immediately prior to studying existentialism, I was quite convinced to the point of seeking therapy, that psychology had perfected a medicine for the writhing mind. I wasn’t necessarily desperate, but having exhausted the perspectives of my peers to a resounding, “Really?” at the confessions of my consciousness, I was interested to speak to someone who claimed not only familiarity, but mastery of all corners of the mind.

I worked at a liquor store last fall with a girl who adores philosophy; I spoke on it before I knew it, I suppose is an eternal truth, but my unconventional comprehension of reality supplemented her knowledge well; I am proficient at scraping thoughts down to their bones. As our thoughts became less guarded I unknowingly scraped myself down to the bone. She followed fearlessly. We began to talk about the inner workings of our own minds and in the face of an inescapable endeavor our search for a reliable and stern guide. I had studied psychology as lightly as philosophy to an unbiased crossroad so I was interested in her practiced stance. She detested psychology. She ended up convincing me with lasting imagery that therapy would make the nausea of uncertainty worse. She held that all a psychologist would do for me is funnel my thoughts and concerns into a manageable conflicts with medicinal resolutions; I could make no use of someone telling me why I am uncertain, for this path to reason is alleviated not by a destination but rather by an excuse. Instead she urged me to take an unwavering look into philosophy; not a look of intrigue, but a look of purpose.

I played in a band this summer with a girl who adores psychology—more than adores, she is pursuing a doctorate degree in the field. Being that I had bolstered my understanding of philosophy and had come to define my past anguish in terms of just that and my future in terms of my pursuit rather than the outcome of possible chemical misfiring in my head, she was keen to sway me into the boundaries of psychology. A credit to her, she did for some time. A discredit to myself, I am quick to surrender my opinions in order to explore another’s passions in a constructive rather than a defensive manner. I go with the flow to a fault. By the end of the summer and some way into this class I finally regained my conviction and dismantled the labels which I had lent myself so willingly. I realized that two things had happened: I had categorized my otherwise completely unrelated thoughts into psychoanalytical language because it felt good to be understood and in a similar vein, I had found comfort in the excuses and pity it provided. I was rather disgusted by my laziness which ended up being a foundational revelation.

Philosophy, more specifically existential philosophy, is the language of life as it happens, not as it is confirmed and forcibly categorized for inspection. It is dynamic and unforgivingly persistent, unceasingly demanding both the best of who we are as a consciousness and who we are as a friend. It offers no excuse, a completely irrevocable responsibility. I appreciate the implicit command to give my best to something. Philosophy has made a complacent existence wistful for wasted time, dead set on reparation.

“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” – Dylan Thomas

History and Contemplation

A prokaryote floats indifferently, inconsequentially contemplating endosymbiosis; Prometheus apathetically kneads a mass of clay between his hands, patiently contemplating the shape of man; both philosophically aesthetic and determined to suspend themselves above existence, content with the objects of their reality, man remains a figment of infinite uncertainty; all of history is contained within this moment as passing inaction is methodically recycled into the future; it is all that is ever confirmed.

“If we first considered the world as an object to be manifested, if we thought that it was saved by this destination in such a way that everything about it already seemed justified and that there was no more of it to reject, then there would also be nothing to say about it, for no form would take shape in it; it is revealed only through rejection, desire, hate and love.”

The prokaryote is thrust from its contemplation by a particular passing cell which without hesitation, stirred by some distant motivation it feverously engulfs, bewildered by its own action, it returns to contemplation. Prometheus returns to his project; as he lifts his head to the peak of Olympus, the titan’s hands independently shape his employers image in the clay. Both the prokaryote and Prometheus are stricken by their freedom in a simultaneous realization of the freedom of others; their actions have seeded the present as it projects into the future and resonates demandingly with the inaction which preceded it. This twofold history is mechanized and initiates process.

“…existence, far from wishing to repose in the security of being, thrusts itself ahead of itself in order to thrust itself still farther ahead, that it aims at an indefinite disclosure of being by the transformation of the thing into an instrument and at the opening of ever new possibilities for man.”

Neither is discouraged or delays as each reality sees the first men, with stares reaching beyond the horizon and into orbit, contemplating a multitude of hungers. Preceded by the steamrolling action, reaction and invention of nature and creation, man, of impossible complexity or glorious image guided by biological adaptation or Hephaestus’ fire, thrusts himself at the world unapologetically; action is all that satisfies his foresight; life demands his attention.

“One cannot justify all that is by asserting that everything my equally be the object of contemplation, since man never contemplates: he does.”

All of contemplation and knowledge is shaped in his actions, history and the future of mankind unfold simultaneously as a confirmation and projection respectively; lessons are confirmed into the past serving as backflow valves which never see regression; freedom and transcendence are asserted through the positive projection of learning; each and every man strives for the entire potential of his existence constantly and vehemently as if running from a great sickness. But man is not so motivated; he returns to the nothingness of the prokaryote and the clay either by force or in comfortable denial.

“But today the fact is that there are men who can justify their life only by a negative action. As we have already seen, every man transcends himself. But it happens that this transcendence is condemned to fall uselessly back upon itself because it is cut off from its goals.”

Here, man is ripped from the collectivity of the project of all of mankind; endangered and oppressed by himself and other men, each attempts to claw his way to a solitary peak of abstract magnitude which dilutes the sights of the great peak. The potential of the species fluctuates between the positive projections of the noble visionaries and the negations of the tyrants while the majority revolve inconsequentially like the cogs of a handless watch.

The Emergence and Alchemy of Ambiguity

I support the weight of my own head and think to myself that life is a rather simple project. My protectors are pleased by my bipedal locomotion in their general direction and my drool infused vocalization of the word, “poopy;” less so as I do so where I stand. Of course these moments precede my consciousness of them, but I am nevertheless a living baby by facticity and my project consists of familiarizing myself with this vessel. When I’ve got a good grasp of it, my mind takes a second look at itself and begins to surrender the periphery to spinal autopilot. Thus I begin forming memories, thought complexity, problem solving abilities and the beginnings of dynamic adaptations. My mind begins to believe itself the master of its universe, unknowingly developing in a simulation.

“In his child’s circle he feels that he can passionately pursue and joyfully attain goals which he has set up for himself. But if he fulfills this experience in all tranquility, it is precisely because the domain open to his subjectivity seems insignificant and puerile in his own eyes.”

I color a picture within the lines and think to myself that life is a rather simple project. I want for no greater station beneath a shroud that is laced at hip height of those doubtless individuals to whom I owe the laws that ground me and feed my every instinct; though I may revolt, I do not do so in freedom, I do so in pursuit of another object of my reality. As far as I can tell, the adults will always make the decisions, and though I am told I will one day join them, the promise is hung in the closet next to my Batman costume.

“He feels himself happily irresponsible. The real world is that of adults where he is allowed to respect and obey. The naïve victim of the mirage of the for-others, he believes in the being of his parents and teachers. He takes them for the divinities which they vainly try to be and whose appearance they like to borrow before his ingenuous eyes.”

There comes a day that my hair gets tangled in the shroud; I begin to writhe as I desperately plea for my parents to help free me, they shudder. Shortly thereafter I am peering down from just above it on the silhouettes of children careening aimlessly, I shudder. Was this me moments ago? I must have asked myself why one too many times. The freedom of the adult which I had guessed at begins to creep into my actions as they begin to resemble choices which weigh upon the world; the adult himself is mortalized, his flaws revealed. I come to realize that I am always my father’s child and as such my father is eternally his father’s child; “adult” is a misnomer; age is an illusion; no one ever figures it out; do your best.

“And when he arrives at the edge of adolescence he begins to vacillate because he notices the contradictions among adults as well as their hesitations and weaknesses. Men stop appearing as if they were gods, and at the same time the adolescent discovers the human character of the reality about him.”

Still my freedom finds some solace in my habits, the simplicity of my relations, the rigidity of my education, but the come down is fast approaching; this is not the last time I will reverberate between identities, yet even the longevity of my conflict escapes me; I cannot comprehend a lifetime of such an insecurity. Each day I ponder my freedom and attitudes without grasping the passing gravity of my choices; my eternity remains veiled and rescues me from the absolute anguish beyond.

“Now, the child set up this character and this universe little by little, without foreseeing its development. He was ignorant of the disturbing aspect of this freedom which he was heedlessly exercising. He tranquilly abandoned himself to whims, laughter, tears, and anger which seemed to him to have no morrow and no danger, and yet which left its ineffaceable imprints about him.”

I feel butterflies in my stomach around a girl in my class, I ponder the rest of my education and the trajectory of my career, I wonder what it’s all for and I think to myself that life is a rather troublesome and tragic project. All of the sudden my habits, education, and relationships fall into my own hands as my parents forget to flinch; I quickly internalize their responsibilities as my duality adapts a concrete realization. All too quickly freedom is not the word so much as is it the sensation that consumes me; it is anguish that consumes me. I will spend far too much time attempting to realize my being and half involved in interactions because it will take far too long for someone to tell me that my intentions are unfounded and my destination is beyond death.

“…nobody can know the peace of a tomb while he is alive.”

I will resign to nihilism and drown a year of my life in dreams of nothingness, but it is only a year in a lifetime. And here I am after having crafted a doctrine for the mastering of my ambiguity, after having created a lack from which I will pursue my being positively and eternally, after having affirmed my discoveries in the work of Simone de Beauvoir. Optimism swells in my gut not a moment too soon.

“…a man is never stupid if he adapts his language and his behavior to his capacities.”

To Know the Other is to Know Myself

Imagine if we were only alone in the world; imagine a world devoid of the Other. Unable to perceive or comprehend any consciousness beyond our own, we interact with the world in solitude, in accordance with our own consciousness. We are the variable and product of every interaction, if the world makes noise it is in response to our call; nothing exists “in-itself,” only “for-itself.” It’s difficult to grasp such a reality having been molded so completely by the Other.

“I am the proof of the Other. That is the original fact. But this proof of the Other is in itself an attitude toward the Other; that is, I can not be in the presence of the Other without being that “in-the-presence” in the form of having to be it. – Jean-Paul Sartre

It seems rather than the world mirroring a single consciousness, the unmediated collision of consciousnesses would rather immediately result in a sort of chaotic slavery. On the contrary, what if we were never alone in the world? Imagine yourself without the consciousness of your own being, but instead with the consciousness of the Other in mind; nothing existing “for-itself,” but rather “for-other” in an abstract sense. All of our interactions mediated in accordance with the will and thoughts of others in mind, would we not see peace or simply the death of self?

“Thus my project of recovering myself is fundamentally a project of absorbing the Other.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

These thought experiments bring us to human-reality where the individual exists “for-itself” and the Other exists “in-itself;” somewhere in between chaos and peace, in the collision of these modes of being is the being as an object “for-others” or as it is for ourselves “being-for-others.” To exist in contingency with the Other who can never truly know you is a horribly frustrating phenomenon. Their existence is necessary for our own being in the world and yet this being escapes our construction; it can only contain so much of us, but never the full extent of our consciousness as even in ourselves this is an infinitely unfinished project.

“I want to stretch out my hand an grab hold of this being which is presented to me as my being but at a distance—like the dinner of Tantalus; I want to found it by my very freedom.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

Worse still the less contact we have with a person while they still hold some model of us in their minds, the more diluted and unrecognizable the shape is and yet they may still claim to “know us.” Sartre maintains that our interactions with the Other are perpetually cycling through either objectifying them in the sense that we possess their freedom for ourselves or recognizing them as a transcendent entity within our own transcendence in the sense that our freedom is dependent upon theirs. This cycle is inherently conflicting as either attempt leaves us alone in demanding our own will or demanding the silence of the will of others. The best course of action then? Find comfort in the limitations of your own consciousness as it pertains to the Other and the consciousness of the Other as it pertains to you and command a reality that accounts for these limitations and the true possibilities of the individual consciousness. What I am describing is an honest life. In your interactions, do not embellish your being for the applause of others, portray it as accurately as you can. Do not accept false criticism and in the same breath and perhaps more importantly, do not accept false praise. Dissect the “being-for-others” both your own and that of the Other in a collective self-consciousness. You may find that you are closer to another’s consciousness than they are to their own, as they are blinded by their “being-for-others.” You’ll find that this confidence and honesty makes it harder for people to lie to you or craft something too far from who you are as you are separate from this being and though you cannot construct it, you can mediate its reality.

Freedom in an Empty Room

What does it mean to exist; what is existence? Is the human reality too muddled to see the raw materials that provide the illusion of its complexity? We have individualized matter between the outlines of the universe by the boundaries and necessity of our own perspective, but do we limit the universe within human understanding or do we limit the universe by limiting the possibilities of human understanding? Are we stunted in sanctifying the simplicity of our senses or are we foolhardy in foregoing their necessity? It is difficult, I daresay even impossible to explain ourselves and the world around us independent of our own explanations; the statement itself is paradoxical.

“I struggle against words.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

Perhaps sighting the universe of some 14 billion years ago will help us in visualizing the true nature of existence; a great nothingness. Everything now is so seemingly unique and yet shares a commonality under which all classifications, descriptions and explanations bend and fade; existence. We are impossibly intricate organizations of stardust, all of us, all that breathes, and all that is silent and still. If the universe were to burst apart into infinitesimally tiny pieces, a collection of atoms, imagine the sameness, imagine the canvas of blackness. If the universe stood still, if consciousness paused, imagine the scene; imagine the deafening stillness and nauseating objectification. Look how the clouds stretch amorphously across space, bound by our atmosphere, tangled in suspension; project this scene onto the whole of the earth, onto the whole of the universe. Blobs confined by other blobs, not to mention the tension of consciousness. Is it all not maddeningly absurd?

“And then all of a sudden, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things, this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality, were only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder–naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

This seems a dead end for us as we do not have the luxury of being a bench. So what must we surrender in order to reveal to us what is otherwise sealed beyond the inescapable prison of our own consciousness without surrendering consciousness itself? I would answer: the necessity of consciousness itself. In this way we poke our heads just above the haze of humanity, if only briefly lest we wish it to be severed permanently, and we see the great expanse of existence; we see a great nothingness; we are filled with the true feeling nausea; a sickness of freedom. As can be with sickness, there is a cure.

“The essential thing is contingency … contingency is not a delusion, a probability which can be dissipated; it is the absolute, consequently, the perfect free gift.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

This freedom does not relieve us of the absurdity of our own survival, however, it simply offers us a perspective by which we may reassess it. For some this freedom may mean anarchy, an outward display of rebellion against the necessity of anything at all, throwing bombs or sitting absolutely still. I would like to call this a waste of an inconsequential run at infinite potential, but my jurisdiction of purpose ends with myself. For others, such as myself, this freedom results in the beautification humanity; an explosion of optimism at the notion that if success is indeterminable, failure is impossible. All has been deemed unnecessary and yet we rage on in form and content. I see now the two great pillars by which our play asserts itself within the nothingness, within the absurdity that fills the nothingness: creativity and progress. Meaningfulness is encased in the subjective appreciation of creativity and the ultimate abstract objective of human progress. I long to see and hear the beautiful things humanity has to create; I long to see how we stoke and brighten the fire of our species unfettered by the necessity of our success; In turn I am unfettered by the necessity of my own success. Surely I long for myself to add to the great creativity and progress of the world, and I will strive for it, but there are no stakes. Even those which I place in the hands of greater individuals than myself are coins tossed in fountains. As much as my five year old self certainly would have liked to wake up with super powers, the deaf ears of the universe did not burden him come morning. So I will wish and wonder, but I will not worry.

“This moment was extraordinary.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

Escaping the Vacuum

As children, what do we make of our lives? Are we haunted in the day by the shadow of our own demise? Do we lie awake at night weighing our purpose against the expanse of the universe? Does the mirror still our bones, does it break the complacent concentration of our outward gaze and all at once present us with the parameters of our own existence? I dare say our minds are capable of such quandary sooner than we may be conscious of, but in youth we escape the weight of their consequences. We may find ourselves burdened by material desire or simply the desire for a few more moments of unfettered freedom, for five more minutes. If we were questioned as to the meaning of our lives and we refrained from deferring to the judgement of our parents then we would likely reply with a literal account of our current actions or circumstance.

“I doubt whether a doctor can answer this question in general terms. For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour.” – Viktor E. Frankl

This is because our lives as children occurred in a vacuum of innocence and non-consequence; we were raised in an incubator overseen by our parents and educators. This vacuum simulated moments so fleeting that some escape even our own memories. There was a lack of permanence to our station and so a lack of consciousness of the nature of our arrival or path. Of course I reference my own childhood which precedes the overwhelming influence of technology and information. Children are becoming their own overseers; they are becoming their own teachers with no regard for the consequences of knowledge. The innocence of childhood may fall with this infinite information on a foundation of sand; upon an unsteady mind it may all be misguided or lost. However, I digress. When the time comes that we leave our parents and begin to erupt in an anxiety for the infinitely forked road before us, we now ask ourselves what that road means. If we are not lucky enough to defer to a blind passion for our career choice or current educational journey we may falter for the first time in jarring fashion. If we are not one of the saved who have jumped from one vacuum of deference to the next then we may find ourselves feeling the first tug of undertow on the lip of a most dangerous vacuum; the existential vacuum. If we cannot surmise a mission statement from our stuttering then we will slip into the infinite unknown. Here we are stricken with the full weight of our meaning and the purpose of our choices that cannot be reprieved by some taskmaster. It is clear that though we may secure a rope beyond the edge of such a void, it is liable to fray, the knot is liable to slip, as with our childhood. We must constantly test the integrity of our support and adjust accordingly. Thus we are offered three different ropes with which we may test a great deal of knots.

“According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: by creating a work or doing a deed; by experiencing something or encountering someone; and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.” – Viktor E. Frankl

You may think this categorization makes the burden no lighter, but we’ve no need to carry our burden anywhere, we are welcome to continue living with such a weight resting comfortably on the inevitability of its resolution. Can we not start by believing in this? That our meaning may present itself to us in time and even that it must? In living we search, we may even find without knowing we’ve arrived or that we were seeking in the first place. Even if we go our entire lives without feeling some profound sense of meaningfulness, it is said that hindsight is 20/20. When we lay upon our deathbeds and our lives are bound in pages before us, then we may find it appropriate to assess the nature of our meaning and the accuracy of our trajectory, for it is too late now to change. Neither living nor dying has time for worry; living too vital, dying too irrevocable.

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

A Senseless Friendship

“Waiting for Godot” was immersive in the same sense as shutting one’s eyes and plugging one’s ears for all of eternity. It turned my surroundings into cardboard props that fell away at the turn of each page so that by the end I stood in a play room as I had as a child only I had no interest in making anything of it. I clung to the book as if commanding a record of the senselessness bestowed upon me some independence from it, but in the same instant I was tempted to rip it up for shattering what shards of the illusion I peer through each day. Certainly they may have only reflected a single eye at one time, but what else keeps us grounded? What else but what we see?

Pozzo: I woke up one fine day as blind as Fortune. Sometimes I wonder if I’m not still asleep. 

I had no place to start my blog post, or at least not a place that had any hope, and hope I was determined for. I realize it is often a dreary endeavor, reflecting upon what it is we are truly doing here,  and it was made all the more dreary by this play. I did not desire to write about and immerse myself in a figurative representation of what I must consider, faced with constant doubt, to be very real; I did not desire to analyze a play about a life that I must consider not to be a play; I could already feel the former convincing the latter of its identity. I was ready to postpone my submission another day upon some distancing from the reading and some post rock climbing optimism (I saw “Auschwitz” in the first reading question for Friday and decided that I would not find it there). Suddenly I thought only of Vladimir and Estragon and I was reminded that I have long considered friendship to be the only thing that matters in life. I thought of their solidarity in the face of absurdity and was reminded of my relationship with my best friend. I have long considered the reality created between two compatible individuals to transcend reality at large. I met him my freshman year of high school; he was the first person I had met that played school like I had, as if it were a game to be cheated and won, or a show to be acted out according to our own script; I had a partner on stage. We used to see just how ridiculous and obstinate we could be and how much disorder we could insight and inspire while maintaining a grade point average in the top ten percent as per our agreed conditions (rules have their place); I looked forward to school like never before.

Vladimir: We wait. We are bored. No, don’t protest, we are bored to death, there’s no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let’s get to work! In an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness!

In ninth grade biology one of our friends got homework detention so we made a bet as to who could get detention first to hang out with him. As soon as the teacher started class that day I yelled, “HEY!” She and the entire class stared at me as I nonchalantly tossed my textbook out the window. Needless to say it took my friend some warming up to my level of play, but he got the hang of it in no time. Our senior year of high school we began the year with a sandwich bet (the loser had to make the winner a sandwich of the winners blueprint) as to who could get a teacher to threaten to call their parents first, assuming neither would succeed because we were eighteen and figured that the threat was well beneath us. Such was the challenge and the moral, to prove that we were not above it for no hierarchy of reality exists; it simply “is” and can be whatever we choose if we have no fear for consequence. Consequence, like coincidence, is irrelevant. The year was nearing its end and we were running out of ideas, knowing at this point any victory would be of dumb luck. We had a statistics test that spring with a teacher who had already admitted to having had nightmares about us and had yelled for the first time in her nearly fifty year career at yours truly.

“Look, if you had, one shot, or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted. In one moment. Would you capture it, or just let it slip?” – Eminem

As soon as she set the test down on my friend’s desk I squeezed the entirety of a Gogurt upon it. The fact that she let us sit next to each other in the first place and never separate us was a testament to how nice she was, to a fault it would seem, and we are only human after all. She asked me how old I was and what grade I was in, rhetorically in the upswing of an inevitable lecture, but I interrupted with, “yogurt.” She then threatened to call my parents as a smile exploded across my face and my friend buried his head in disbelief as I replied, “Go ahead! Call my parents and tell them that I squeezed a Gogurt onto my friends test for a double decker grilled cheese sandwich half cheddar half pepper jack made out of both love and defeat.”

Estragon: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?

Vladimir: Yes yes, we’re magicians. But let us persevere in what we have resolved, before we forget.

I digress. The point is that even in this sublayer, this past the waist and approaching the breath submersion into absurdity, we created our own existence. It carried on into everyday life as well; any time we were together it was as if we persisted in a separate reality of our own design and importance, nothing outside this sphere weighed on us in the slightest. Over the years we brought many other friends into the fold and likewise nothing in this world can touch them. We have been an essential resonance in each other’s lives, a comforting hum beneath which all other noise bends. Though our habitual lives diverge, we maintain our mastering of what truly matters: nothing at all.

The Absurd Revolution

Around the age of ten the entirety of my societal journey lay mapped out before me, as vague as a single dotted line segmented by x’s to be sure, but labeled enough to bring me to tears before my father in quandary. As it was presented to me: I was to be born, my first accomplishment, I was to attend school throughout the entirety of my most physically promising years, I was to seek and secure employment in order to fund my continued employment, I was to retire and realize my ultimate freedom at the moment my body and mind were to begin their decline knowing nothing more than the toil that I had crawled from, and I was to die at any given moment along the way, but certainly the days of my gravest futility are numbered. I wished to be a wild animal, to suffer and die with my fists clenched around my life, clinging to every last drop of light; I dreaded this indifferent march toward my demise, to slowly fizzle out beneath the keeper of my possibility. When I regained some composure and realism, I wished to be a Buddhist monk and surrender my life to meditation, to have nothing of this world but everything of myself. This was my first glimpse at the absurdity of life and it has clung to me harshly, ever tightening its grip as I slip into its clutches. All the while I pretend to evade it, but still one foot follows the other along the dotted line.

“Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm — this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.” – Albert Camus

The absurdity of our predicament creeps in shadow for our entire lives, in some it is hushed and veiled for the duration. I cannot say if this existence is a happier one for I can scarcely remember it and it would be biased in the mind of a child. When it comes, however, it leaps into the light with a relentless shout of presence. It marks our last moments of what comfort remained within us; it transcends the toil of this world and rips us from our complacent vessels. Some part of us now looks down from above and observes our every societal chess move, calculating both its motivations and purpose. This being has the power and tendency to wonder beyond our station and even to favor its own reality of dissolution.

In certain situations, replying “nothing” when asked what one is thinking about may be pretense in man . . . But if that reply is sincere, if it symbolizes that odd state of soul in which the void becomes eloquent, in which the chin of daily gestures is broken, in which the heart vainly seeks the link that will connect it again, then it is as it were the first sign of absurdity.” – Albert Camus

This dissolution is perpetuated as suicide; a recalling of the human body by the soul. It represents a possibility of existence and therefore as I measure myself as a sum of my possibilities, it demands some thought. But my thought upon it is short and disdained. Suicide would not defeat my suffering, but simply negate it and with it all of the undefined possibilities of life. I will entertain no such loophole through my toil as in this toil I have much still to learn, in my suffering I take pride.

“There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn” – Albert Camus

The fact that I have not killed myself is a testament against my knowledge or belief of any hierarchy of human suffering or futility. I am not owed some grand relief from my station simply because others have relieved themselves under a great pressure and I may consider my quandaries with existence to be of the greatest suffering endurable. Nor do I long to be relieved, I am defiant in revolt and break all of my experiences down into meaningful learning with which I may transcend my absurdity here on this plane; I am mastering absurdity while watching both the complacent and the struggling among the incessant din of reality. Furthermore, if I believe my struggles to be greater than any others, it is simply because I cannot imagine they’d be understood by anyone, but this is the eternal factor of hierarchy, of triumph and suffering; misunderstanding. My problems are no greater or heavier than any others, they are simply my own, and in this sense they are my own to conquer here among the conquerors. If for a moment I believe this march to be futile then I have already lost.

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” – Albert Camus

Dan and I

It didn’t take long for my classmates to tune into and follow my chaos like it was their favorite television show; I was a popular kid even in my most explosive years. I began to cater to my audience and channel my outbursts like a true showman, uncapping the carbonation just enough for the satisfying hiss without making too much of a mess. In essence, I became a story teller, initially unaware that I was sculpting an entertainer indiscernible from my image who would seal these suppositions to my name. I was horribly misunderstood for most of my youth and knew silent loneliness in a crowded room so I took to this journey into the they-self with fervor.

“Thus, the they disburdens Da-sein in its everydayness. Not only that; by disburdening it of its being, the they accommodates Da-sein in its tendency to take things easily and make them easy. And since the they constantly accommodates Da-sein, it retains and entrenches its stubborn dominance.” – Martin Heidegger

I reveled in my popularity through the years as my sculpture shifted like a chameleon of both internal and external stimulus; his presence within me and his grip upon me were often fuzzy like a waking dream that dissolved into the throws of reality. Though I was always present internally, this manifestation became the face of the company, taking over at measure and will; all the while I believed that he and I were two halves of a whole.

“But what remains to me as an individual is what never fits into a whole: the choice of my tasks and my striving for accomplishment are simultaneous manifestations of another origin, unless the annihilating thought that all I do might be senseless makes me shut my eyes.” – Karl Jaspers

The line blurred completely in the moments that life and school were simply a matter of existing and not striving; I would have been lost to him entirely if tragedy had not demanded my foundations. In all of the moments that I had sunk into my individuality and felt like an alien, my uncle always seemed to understand who I was and who I could become. He had been the youngest of four kids just like me and seemed to share some mutual intellectual experience. No matter the depth of my recoil beneath this identity of society, he was my resurgence. In my junior year of high school he died of a massive stroke and I became a spectator of myself. I wrote this poem in the few days following as if instinctively responding to this scission:

 “The frost on his consciousness swallows his shoelaces,

Leaves him hollow and motionless, left to be interrogated by the living.

Constantly in between maddening reality and blissful dissolution.

Jumping in and out of touch without fraying the strings tied to his quintessence.

In between life and death, feeling he does not belong to either.” – Dan Meissner

I lent my name and the uninterrupted attention of the world to the man I had built over all of those years while I prepared to tread water. It turns out I am an exceedingly good swimmer; I like to think that my uncle threw me into the ocean to give me a permanent grasp of my potential, he was too good for this world anyway. I began to build myself seemingly independent of even my own mind including every variable and sway that it contains. I no longer felt at the mercy of emotion or impulse; I ruled myself with indomitable will. I was so consumed in this journey that I forgot to check in with my clay man. Two years passed and I was shaken to the surface by some jarring news; Dan had fallen in love and flunked out of his freshman year of college. It was a call for action.

“I shall subsist in Borges, not in myself (assuming I am someone), and yet I recognize myself less in his books than in many another, or than in the intricate flourishes played on guitar.” – Luis Borges

This, however, was not a surrender but an active command of my duality; still, I am haunted by the notion that at any moment I may not be myself.

“I don’t know which one of the two of us is writing this page.” – Luis Borges

The Primitive Man That Therefore I Am

When I was a kid I tried to climb anything that would let my hands take my feet from the ground; I liked the idea of being unreachable. I would climb up to the top of the garden tree, or the roof of my house, or the roof of my elementary school when I wanted to get away from the world (the police weren’t overly fond of that last bit, though I stifled the urge to climb the water tower on several occasions out of empathy for their predicament; I’m not an animal). Though before I attended school, I was rather wild; I earned the nickname “Monkey Boy” for my curt and cacophonous style of communication and my preferred confinement to the treetops. Needless to say my transition into organized society was an arduous and reluctant trudge.

“I take bad conscience to be the deep sickness into which man had to fall under the pressure of that most fundamental of all changes he ever experienced–the change of finding himself enclosed once and for all within the sway of society and peace.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

From first to third grade I spent nearly every day of school in the principal’s office and sporadically from there on out until high school. I got into physical fights with other students weekly; I verbally aggravated–I nearly wrote ‘abused’ but this was far to playful on my end for such a word–students and teachers daily; I was borderline expelled in second grade save for my indisputably flawless report card. In fact, administration had to choose between me and another boy who upheld his share of the terror; an unwitting casualty in my game. I was instead forbidden to attend the Halloween party that year which played as more of a reward because as much as people feared me, I feared costumes (I still hate dressing up, even in formal wear, but now because it seems redundant and cheap; if you cannot say enough in your skin then you have nothing to say). I remained in school on the condition that I be enrolled in an anger management program with the school’s guidance counselor shortly thereafter; it helped me in the way that stuffing all of your shit under the bed or in the closet helped you clean your room.

“Those terrible bulwarks with which the organization of the state protects itself against the old instincts of freedom–punishments belong above all else to these bulwarks–brought it about that all those instincts of the wild free roaming human turned themselves backwards against man himself.” – Friedrich Nietzsche 

The anger was and is a part of me and trying to smother it would smother my true self; my parents enrolled me in martial arts because they were much better at their job. I remember telling my dad that I wished I had been a Spartan during the Peloponnesian War with Athens (not verbatim, but I had the idea), I always felt that I had been born in the wrong era. I had dreams of becoming the greatest UFC fighter of all time, but my dad said that it would be a grotesque waste of such a special mind (I’m not sure how special a mind is if it cannot choose for itself); I still box once a week. I prodded people to see the sides of them that they so proudly believed to be conquered, the sides of them that they condemned in me; much like Kierkegaard drove his company off the sidewalk, I longed to see the animal passion of humanity, the urgency, the fear, the triumph. I was unfamiliar with everything on the ground, so I climbed.

“Just as water animals must have fared when they were forced either to become land animals or to perish, so fared these half animals who were happily adapted to wilderness, war, roaming about, adventure–all at once all of their instincts were devalued and ‘disconnected’.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Humanity is blind to its own state of dire transition; we etch the same paths at every sunrise in the hopes that progress will arrive as a familiar friend, as if we are owed its arrival on these same streets. We ignore some instinct that urges us to take a closer look in the mirror; some distant child of humanity is tugging at our jacket; some ancestor is breathing down our neck. I dream to one day climb the face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without rope or safety net. This is the transition I speak of. I will wait for us their.

“–he awakens for himself an interest, an anticipation, a hope, almost a certainty, as if with him something were announcing itself, something preparing itself, as if man were not a goal but only a path, an incident, a bridge, a great promise . . .” – Friedrich Nietzsche